“Scholars are still puzzled as to why the lush jungle planet, Mong Bal began eroding into a desert five hundred years ago.” This is one of the many lies you might find perusing the Fractured Histories in a Mong Bal library.
One of the more honest translations, anyway. Many won’t admit the desert exists at all. The truth of the matter is that Mong Bal’s slow death is easily traced to the construction of The Great Basin: an ocean sized well which Jin the Magnificent built to store enough nectar to sustain his dynasty’s needs for a millennium.
Even at the time,
Homyn alchemists warned the Mong Bal about the dangers of storing massive quantities of nectar outside of
Source, but Jin and his warlords dismissed the advice as propaganda aimed at shackling their people to the roving artificial planet.
But the alchemists were right. The Great Basin stayed, Mong Bal turned into a desert, and the Warlords responsible died unconvinced they had anything to do with it. Now, the planet is almost inhospitable, save for a handful of magically sustained cities ruled by the descendants of those responsible for the planet’s collapse.
Jotun, Sera, and
Io all have their share of occasional perils, but a Mong Bal walled city is a truly dangerous place. Most warlords control enough artifacts to make them de facto gods within their own walls, and their personalities tend to gravitate toward a dangerous combination of cruelty and insecurity. Mong Bal warlords are not known for having scruples against disappearing anyone who they perceive as a threat to their control.
Those who survive life within the dominion of a warlord, however, are treated to some of the most wondrous locales in the spheres. Each city houses its own impossible ecosystem that reflects the tastes of its leader; including trees that tower to the heights of mountains, winter wonderlands that turn to tropical paradises at a copper frog’s turn, or volcanoes that spew snow when they erupt, just to name a few.
Such cities require nectar and natural resources on a massive scale to maintain. While warlords are flush with the former thanks to Jin’s efforts, the latter has come at a high price to the Mong Bal people. Those who live outside the walls suffer spartan lifestyles in a constant struggle for subsistence. In wake of the Alliance’s formation many angry Mong Bal have taken to arms against their masters in hopes of one day bowing to the Alliance instead of a Warlord.
Physical Characteristics
From a distance Mong Bal appear to be humans with tails and elongated arms, but on closer inspection many share other facial features (predominantly noses and ears) with monkeys. Mong Bal range from 90-250 lbs and 4’ to 8’ tall.
Racial Edges:
Kings of Swing. Mong Bal receive a +1 modifier to all Acrobatics checks.
All Hands. Mong Bal can manipulate objects with their feet and tail with the same level of ease as their hands. For the purposes of grappling, climbing, etc. Mong Bal are treated as having five hands. They can also wield a maximum of three weapons (as opposed to two) at a time using their tail as a third hand. However, tails can only wield small weapons like daggers.
Brachiate (Sprinting Edge). With a full set of prehensile limbs propelling them forward, Mong Bal move faster vertically than horizontally. When sprinting, climbed spaces count as ½” rather than 1”. Note that a successful Acrobatics Test may still be required to climb difficult surfaces.
Backgrounds
Warlord
As deluded as the ruling class of Mong Bal tend to be, there’s no denying the job can be tough. Maintaining an opulent lifestyle on a dying planet, playing politics with your family and those from other cities, all while keeping those pesky rebels with their tall tales about an apocalyptic desert in check. Not all warlords are inherently cruel and many (perhaps justifiably) view themselves as functionaries of a necessary evil for holding onto the last vestiges of their once great culture.
Warlords will often give away young members of their family to the corsairs as a kind of tribute to convince the Alliance not to intervene in their civil war. Others voluntarily seek the position to discover the system for what it really is beyond the lies their families tell.
Background Skills:Diplomacy 1d4, Bluff 1d4, Interrogate 1d4.
Background Edge: Walled Mind. All Mong Bal royalty receive training at a young age to protect their minds from pollution in both the waking and dream world from the propaganda of the outside. Mong Bal warlords receive a +1 bonus against those using the Bluff, Astral Combat, or Steal Secret skills against them.
Rebel
Mong Bal who choose their lineage poorly or simply refuse to adopt their local Warlord’s twisted brand of reality often align themselves with a rebel group. Many rebels fight against warlords outside the walls of their cities, but a few operate as spies in the guise of servants, bodyguards, or even torturers for their local warlord.
Background Skills: Bluff 1d4, Survival 1d4, Sneak 1d4.
Background Edge: Rebel With a Cause. Receive a +1 charisma modifier when dealing with all impoverished NPCs. This modifier increases by one (to a maximum of 4) every time the party defeats a corrupt ruler (at the GM’s discretion to determine who is a corrupt ruler).
Hanuman Brother
All Mong Bal cities share two things in common; they claim to function without the assistance of any outside entity, and they all lie in making this claim.
The Hanuman Brotherhood is a renowned organized crime family of smugglers for hire who are responsible for discretely delivering necessaries to the walled cities. They are instantly recognizable (when they are in uniform) by their black robes, conical hats, and crossbows.
Any Mong Bal (including women, despite the organization's name) can join the Hanuman Brotherhood at the cost of binding themselves to a strict vow of poverty and complete loyalty to the brotherhood for a duration of twenty years. In exchange, retired brothers receive a lavish retirement stipend and protection by the brotherhood for life.
Brothers will often join the corsairs in an attempt to escape their vows. Oftentimes, the Hanuman will also implant members within the Corsairs’ ranks to assist any brothers who may run afoul with the interplanetary law.
Background Skills: Crossbow 1d6, Smuggle 1d6, Interrogate 1d6.
Background Edge: Black Market Connections. When a Hanuman Brother is inside a city, they may make a Gather Information check to find a Hanuman fence (at GM’s discretion) who will purchase any item from them and sells commonly available black market goods.
Politics
On paper, the Mong Bal vest absolute political power in the warlords who rule their walled cities. In practice, much like everything on Mong Bal, the reality is murkier and full of contradictions. While a warlord's power is absolute within their city walls, they still rely on legions of "faithful" ministers to run the bureacracies that allow them to exercise their power, as well as feed them information that guides its use. Inept despots who take these facts for granted often find themselves becoming unwitting puppets to those who claim to serve them, victims of the very distortions of reality that they use to cow their own people. For this reason, a wise warlord often distrusts those beneath them, creating a climate rife for intrigue and abuses of power within a Warlord's court.
That is to say nothing of the strings that originate from outside the city's walls. Loyalty and adoration will do little to feed a hungry belly or power the artifacts that keep a city running. For these more basic needs, warlords often turn to the Great Basin Council, a supra-organization of warlords who guard and maintain the Mong Bal's private supply of nectar within the Great Basin in the capitol,
Jin City. To suggest that powers might exist over and above a warlord would be considered seditious heresy wihtin a walled city, yet among their peers in the capitol these noble families must jockey among one another as peers and even bow as supplicants to keep the nectar flowing to their ciites.
As such, while the common folk of Mong Bal do not recognize the Great Basin Council's authority or even existence, among warlords they serve as an important check on power who can corall the untouchable warlords when the planet's interests demand it or when the warlord's own abuses of power cross the pale for even the Mong Bal's permissive standards. That is not to say the Great Basin Council rules all of Mong Bal. Certain "rogue warlords" refuse to bow to anyone and instead get their nectar through more illicit means, such as the Hanuman brotherhood. Cities run by such warlords are particularly dangerous places, as these individuals are free to run rampant without any checks on their authority.
Then, of course, ther are the rebels--the Mong Bal who refuse to submit to the deception and lies of those who claim to rule their planet. Rebellion has been a force in Mong Bal culture since even before the time of Jin the Magnificent. However, the Mong Bal's brief membership in the Chimera Alliance created an unprecedented groundswell of rebel activity. Perhaps it was exposure to peoples who were not forced to submit to a warlord's worldview, or perhaps witnessing the fall of the
Koan Empire proved to them that no government is insurmountable--but more Mong Bal than ever before are putting aside their comfort and risking their lives to dare dream of a better future for their planet. Given the overwhelming odds against them, the rebels have not seen much success at unseating the warlords. Even the rare walled city that they liberate often quickly falls to pirate raids or other warlord's fleets--sometimes even rebel governments themselves adopt the cruel traits of the very people they overthrew and become warlords in their own right.
Culture
The monolothic walls that surround Mong Bal cities keep out more than just sandstorms and sky pirates. Rather, they mark ideological divides that seperate those who live within the walls from the uncomfortable truths inside. Each warlord (whether accurately or not) traces their lineage back to the cultural heros and revolutionaries who fought with Jin the Magnificent to overthrew the old dynasts and built the Great Basin that brought power, prosperity, and eventually ruin to the Mong Bal people. More patriotic Mong Bal see such lineages as nothing short of divine mandates to rule. Often warlords develop cult followings, being treated tantamount to gods among their citizens and revered for their many accomplishments--and also the many accomplishments of ancient races that they take credit for. To these Mong Bal the infallible proclomations of their beloved warlords shape not only the laws they follow, but also reality itslef.
Success and survival in a Mong Bal city is determined more by a citizen's ability to adapt to the warlord's local dogma than their actual skills and contribution to society. Those who fall out of step (or the target of scandals created by rivals) often disappear or stripped of their free through reeducation. The worldviews each warlord enforces can drastically differ from one another. Most prescribe the belief that the desert outside the city walls do not exist, or at least was not caused by the actions of the planet's leaders. Other views range from the palatable--like overemphasizing the greatness of local leaders--to the difficult to swallow--like erasing once popular figures from the public consciousness or belief in entirely imaginary neighborhoods to support a warlord's claims that their city is bigger than it actualy is. Needless to say, coping and adapting to cognitive dissonance is a skill with which most city-born Mong Bal become acquainted at an early age.
These lies, from the perspective of the warlords themselves (at least those who have not fallen to believing in them wholesale), are seen as a necessary evil to preserve Mong Bal's culture. To them, the rebels and waste dwellers are nothing more than barbarians at the gates, waiting to loot their precious cities and pervert their traditions at the first opportunity. As the expanding desert swallows more of their planet, the warlords can at least preserve those wonders in the minds of their subjects blinded by the high city walls.
Economics
Self-sustenance is the key economic virtue of Mong Bal cities--and one that paltry few are able to live up to. It wouldn't do for a de facto god to rely on others to feed their people, but the Mong Bal warlords must often do just that thanks to the planet's diminshing natural resources and farmable land. The organized crime family known as the Hanuman Brotherhood is ever happy to assist with this conundrum. Their smuggling operations effectively and discreetly transport goods from one city to another, allowing a globalist economy to function among city-states with decidedly isolationist attitudes.
The actual transport of goods across these cities remains a decidedly tricky matter thanks to the desert's inhospitable climes. For most, travel between cities is only possible thanks to airship technology that the
Koan Empire provided to the Mong Bal in exchange for their fealty. Occasionally caravans trek the desert itself, often ferrying their goods on the back of giant long-necked tortoises called galopadonts. This traffic allows small communities of waste dwellers to survive outside city walls, either by setting up outopsts and oases catering to travellers or by taking those goods for themselves as sky pirates.
Despite its isolation and withdrawal from the Chimera alliance, Mong Bal remains a coveted trading partner among interplanetary merchants. Those who seek to do business with these reclusive people face many obstacles, including embargoes, sadistic warlords, and finding a way to convert their fortune into Mong Bal's unique currencty based around jade. Still, the risks are often worth it. Mong Bal cities are hotbeds for rare commodities and powerful ancient artifacts that have escaped censorship from the Chimera Alliance, and those who manage to leave the planet with full cargo holds can make a handsome fortune.
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